Why Burger King's Black Cheese Burger is Actually Pretty Cool

By now, most of you are probably familiar with the visually nightmarish Kuro Burger from Burger King Japan. Both Jesus Diaz at Sploid and Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku ran posts about it, and it’s been all over the internet. But while it looks unquestionably Lovecraftian, its construction is fascinating and I’d eat that goddamn thing in a heartbeat.

Sure, it looks like the active ingredient Sauron would use in his grilled cheese sandwiches and seems to possess the metallic sheen of a Lincoln towncar. I’ll grant you that. But if you’re willing to eat the plastic travesty that is American cheese* in the first place, you really have no excuse to say you wouldn’t eat this just because it’s the wrong color. They don’t use food dye to get them that color, after all: both the cheese and the bun are made with bamboo charcoal, which sounds like an interesting flavor in and of itself. Hell, maybe it even mitigates the fact that American cheese tastes like Fidel Castro’s artificial anus. One can only hope.

The other thing that I’ve seen throw people off are the words “squid ink.” Look, I get that seeing those words associated with food is weird as hell for Middle America (particularly the Midwest, where they actually have a food item they proudly refer to as “Hot Dish” and see nothing wrong with that**), but if you have even the slightest regard for seafood and you’ve never had squid ink pasta, you’re missing out.

Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian cuisines all make not-uncommon use of squid ink in cooking, and squid ink pasta in particular is outstanding, imbuing typical (and let’s face it, a little bit boring) pasta with a subtle oceanic flavor. It’s most commonly (and for obvious reasons) paired with seafood and cream-based sauces, which we all know are better than tomato sauces (no, shut up, I’m right). Yes, I promise it doesn’t taste even a little bit like that time you accidentally put the wrong end of your pen in your mouth, so if your best explanation for why you wouldn’t eat squid ink pasta is “it’s the wrong color,” seriously, put down your chicken tenders, finish third grade, and put on your big kid pants.

I know this is a promotional Japan-only product, but dammit, I really wish I could try one. Why does everywhere else get to have way more interesting/batshit insane fast food items while we get stuck with a shameless and badly-executed Big Mac ripoff? It’s just not fair.

* Dear everyone about to comment by putting Cheese in quotation marks and saying “FIFY”: the joke was funny the first 3,000 times I saw it. Be more creative.

** Christ, Midwest, this is more of a national embarrassment than Miley Cyrus. Get your shit together.